


Threads

by aquietdin



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:49:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquietdin/pseuds/aquietdin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the worst day of the year, and he needed a drink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threads

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after Resident Evil 6.

Government Agency work had good days. It had bad days. Then it had days like today, so thoroughly awash with frustration and impotent rage that the only cure was to scrub it clean with a few heavy drinks and a long sleep.

He hated today.

Stopping to crack his neck, Leon poured another two fingers of bourbon. It was far from his first (the first being just after three p.m., knocked back in one go after a heated discussion with a superior), and he doubted it would be his last tonight. He glanced at the digital clock on his microwave. Ten twenty-three glared at him. A few more hours, and it would be over.

Bare feet padded across the floor of his modest apartment to stare out the window at the not-so-modest view. Downtown DC glittered in the night. He normally loved the way the city shone, but tonight all he saw was his own reflection in the glass, rumpled and haggard. He felt threadbare. Old. It only stoked his irritation, he didn't need any more reminders of today.

Leon turned and solemnly marched to his couch, plain and unassuming, with a heavy dent in one side. He settled into the well-worn spot and stared at the wall. Sip. A large TV that he was never home to watch. Books that he'd only half read, many he'd never even opened. Stacks of magazines, burned DVDs scrawled with marker and flash drives covered in dust.

Sip.

He rubbed at his eyes, pinching at his nose. Today.

"Well now," A voice behind him, from the window he'd just left. "This certainly is a pitiful sight."

He didn't need to look up. He could pick that voice out in a crowd of thousands, and the older he got, the more he swore he heard it everywhere.

"Ada."

The soft click of heels, a sound he could tell apart from any other pair of feet. Sip.

She came into view, lit by the lamp near the books. Leon raised his head despite his exhaustion to greet her sly smile. She was dressed in red. Always.

She put her hands to her slender hips. "Is this really how you're spending your birthday?"

Leon visibly recoiled, taking a sip that was far larger than the previous few. "You shouldn't be here."

She sat on the arm of the couch, the pinstripes on her thigh elegant and smooth next to his wrinkled shirt. "I shouldn't be in a lot of places," came her reply. "But you know my feelings on those sort of rules."

She plucked the tumbler from his hand and sniffed at the half-empty contents. "Speaking of rules, I think there's one against cheap booze." She set the glass on a side table, turning, her hip jutting upwards in a way that Leon caught in the edge of his vision. When she turned back, Ada produced two glasses and a bottle of amber colored liquid.

"Why don't we toast to your thirty-seventh?"

Leon's head thumped against the back of the couch, and he scrubbed at his face with his palms. He hated hearing the number aloud. That number meant nothing good, and every year, it was worse. That many years lost, that many years spent shooting monsters and crawling through slime, that many years spent always one step behind whatever new madman had taken over. That many years since his dreams - a career on the force, a wife, kids - was yanked out from under him in a mess of blood and gunfire.

A cool glass was pressed into his hand.

"Now, now," Ada teased. "We can't stop time, might as well embrace it."

He'd heard her voice just enough to recognize the compassion under the banter, low and hidden, but still there. His head lurched up from the couch to study his new drink. Leon sniffed the contents while Ada poured herself a glass. The bottle, he could now see, looked older than both of them, the worn glass marked with wax stamps and faded paper.

Leon took a sip. This drink, robust and oaky, went down far smoother than his previous glass.

"You're just going to trust that I haven't given you poison?"

He let one corner of his mouth creep up, eyeing her tall boots. "I can think of worse ways to go than drinking fine liquor served to me by a beautiful woman."

Ada laughed softly. "Now there's the Leon we all know and love."

"Oh?" he felt his mood lighten a bit. "You know me so well, but the only thing I know for sure about you is that your name probably isn't really Ada."

A pause. "I'm a Capricorn."

Leon's eyes went to her face for a moment of disbelief before he huffed a laugh. He knew this game. It was familiar and comfortable. "No you're not."

She cocked an eyebrow. "You've got me there."

Shaking his head, Leon took another drink, feeling the warmth of it creep through his chest. He saw Ada take a sip, looking surprisingly dignified from her perch on the arm of his sofa, stopping to swirl the contents of her glass.

"I've been holding on to this bottle for too long," she said, holding the glass up to the light. Her face danced with gold reflections. "I needed someone to drink it with."

"And that someone just happens to be me?"

"I don't know anyone else having a birthday recently."

Leon paused, then gently let out the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. He continued to nurse his drink as Ada did the same, her hip next to his shoulder.

This was dangerous, far beyond the simple fact that a top government agent was casually sharing drinks with one of the world's most wanted spies. Leon didn't know what this was. Whatever was between them began in 1998 with a bullet and hadn't moved or changed in more than 15 years. It stretched out like a silk thread, fragile, too delicate to give name to for fear it would break. And even so it remained, through years of lies, running and deception. He'd been a scared, naive boy and she'd easily swept him up, carved out a piece of him, and kept it for herself. A decade and a half of chasing, wondering, fear and hope. All over one kiss.

Leon finished his drink, the warmth spreading to his arms. Ada poured him another without missing a beat. She always wore gloves now.

"Ada," his voice was too harsh in the silence. "Why are you here?"

She paused, her glass next to her lips. "I thought I covered that."

The buzzing in his head was drowning out his rationale. He was tired. More tired than he could remember being in his life.

"Not what I meant."

She didn't answer, but instead finished her drink. She took his glass away and set it with hers on the coffee table, and turned to sit beside him on the couch. She didn't meet his eyes, her expression and posture carefully guarded.

Leon took a chance and tugged at the thread.

"Ada," he turned to her. In the gold light of the lamp he could see her face, her delicate features. And there, where he hadn't seen it before, a web of tiny creases around her otherwise sharp, ageless eyes. Time hadn't left her any more unscathed than he. She was just much better at hiding it.

"What are we doing?" The question was small and brittle.

Her eyes flicked rapidly around his face. "We're sharing a drink." Her words were light, the tone she used when she avoided answering his questions. Which is how she always answered him. He wanted to hear anything else.

"Ada," Leon turned his chest towards her, a tentative challenge. There was something in her expression he couldn't read, either because of his swimming head, or perhaps because he'd breached their unseen, unspoken boundary. He toed the line, bravery fueled by creeping fatigue. "Aren't we both getting a little old for this?"

'This' didn't need to be defined. It hung heavy in the air between them, a lead weight that finally caused a tiny dip in her shoulders. Ada reached out a hand to his left shoulder, pressing in with her gloved fingertips until she found the indent there. A heavy scar from when she'd pried a chunk of metal from his body. It never healed properly.

If it wasn't for that bullet, she could've easily left him behind.

When she finally spoke, her voice was barely more than a breath. "If I gave you an answer now, would it really change anything?"

He stared at her, searching her face for some kind of clue. But she wouldn't give him one, not tonight.

Leon sagged, exhaling. Ada took mercy, pulling his shoulders to guide his head down to rest in her lap. He went without any resistance, slumping in defeat, his cheek heavy against her thigh.

Ada combed his hair away from his face with her fingers, lingering on the smooth skin of his cheekbone. She felt his hot breath from his nose on her leg and knew he was right. Age was catching up to them, creeping slowly and eroding them away when they weren't looking. It had stolen so much from them already. How much longer she could go before she was stripped bare was winding down.

She examined him carefully. Leon Scott Kennedy, she knew more about him than she should. Medical records, psych evaluations, internet history. She knew his scars, how he took his coffee, and how his right knee tended to ache after a long day. It was only when she stopped to wonder why she knew that she started to question which one of them was actually doing the chasing.

She shook her head, smiling sadly.

 


End file.
